Vaccination appointments fill up in Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Palm Beach Gardens.

DELRAY BEACH — Three cities across Palm Beach County opened COVID-19 sign-ups Thursday that were gone within minutes as fire departments started to help with the rollout efforts.

The state’s health department had long been discussing about recruiting fire departments to help vaccinate the public, and now those plans are underway, although slowly.

Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Palm Beach Gardens on Thursday opened their websites to register seniors for vaccinations. They plan to start the vaccinations Friday. Each fire department had 200 doses to go around.

Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner said “it’s part of the plan” to expand the reach of fire departments that are “capable of getting the vaccines into the arms of seniors as quickly as possible” beyond those three agencies.

In Delray Beach, the city gave its residents about 14 hours of notice. The spots were gone in less than a minute after registration began.

“It’s a safe guess to say there were thousands of people who tried to get one of our 200 appointments today,” said agency spokeswoman Dani Moschella. “We are ready to go, as are other fire departments in the county, whenever the Department of Health is able to supply us with more doses of the vaccine.”

She said discussions to use fire departments to give the vaccines have been underway for weeks.

In Boca Raton, after the city on Thursday morning received confirmation it would get 200 doses, it moved fast to update its website and emailed residents simultaneously. The appointment slots were filled within three minutes, with 900 people logging in to the page at the same start time, said city spokeswoman Chrissy Gibson.

Spots were also full within 10 minutes in Palm Beach Gardens, according to a city spokeswoman.

The appointment process has been cumbersome with a crashed phone system and busy phone lines.

The town of Palm Beach gave the appearance of special privileges when it got 1,000 doses late last month for its firefighters and senior population. The next day Dr. Alina Alonso, director of the state health department in Palm Beach County, said she sat down with her staff to figure out how to equitably distribute the vaccines elsewhere but then realized “we did not have enough to give to fire-rescue” countywide.

“I was not able to communicate with my staff prior to it being given to Palm Beach,” she told county commissioners earlier this week.

The plan was for fire departments to give it to their residents, exactly what the town of Palm Beach did. Still, she said now that distribution to one city was “an error.”

“We gave it out too soon before we realized we didn’t have enough vaccine to give to everybody,” Alonso said.

County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay said the information is changing daily and called the overall vaccine rollout — in an apparent reference to the federal level — a “chaotic distribution.”

For now, people 65 and older can put themselves in the queue to get appointments by emailing the Florida Department of Health in Palm Beach at chd50feedback@ flhealth.gov.

Those who didn’t make an appointment Thursday with a fire department won’t be able to get a vaccine and will be turned away. Registrants must be 65 or older and must bring valid identification with them to the appointment.